dont know if this is adding anything to the conversation as I didn't put the actual engine together or deal directly with Tim Meyer - however I have one of Tims engines in my bronco and it runs right about 40 psi at idle after its good and warm - A little higher when cold and under throttle. Engine runs about 190-200 around town, a bit higher on the trail or standing still. I run an oil cooler off the filter and added two puller fans for when it gets really warm

 

Why so much interest in oiling the cam chain? Havent heard of these failing often. I understand billet cams need a bronze dizzy gear as they are a lot harder.
As an aside I get upwards of 50-60 psi hot idling and around 100 cruising using a standard oil pump and moroso relief spring when I rebuilt the truck. Clearances were obviously ok.

 

If I may I am paying attention to this as I intend to build an engine a like this next winter. To me there are two reasons, first this engine could last a very long time so why not do what we can to ensure every part including timing chain last. Second a roller camshaft puts more stress on these parts, you mention the gear which is the most important factor but also the steeper ramps increase stresses.

 

Fair enough. As I mentioned earlier, I modified the dam in the intake valley by the dizzy to let oil get back quicker.
Squirter shouldn't be too hard as long as there enough room and it cant come undone drastically dropping pressure to the rest of the engine.

 

Cole - To answer your question, it looks like the plug is 1/8" thick at the center, which is where the hole would be drilled.

Brute - I need to think about the cam retention plate for a bit, so will bypass that for a moment.

As for the idea of a piece of tubing to squirt on things, I offer three pictures that try to determine the layout. First, here's a drawing I did to help me understand. Note that these are not highly exact measurements and I really should have changed the precision of the #'s on the printout. But, they are close enough for government work.


Then here's a view through the cam gear's slot showing the vertical position of the driver's side oil gallery, which looks to be just above the the top of the distributor's gear, and nicely lined up with the outside edge of the cam sprocket.



Then here is a view down the hole for the distributor, showing the alignment of the oil gallery and the cam gear.



It looks to me like a stream coming straight out of the oil gallery would hit the chain or the back side of the sprocket and splash everywhere in that cavity, lubing the distributor & cam gear as well as the chain & sprocket. And I'm not sure I want to go to any complexity there since it is possible for something to come loose and that could cause serious problems. But, a hole in a plug isn't going to get worse or fall off.

Anyway folks, don't let this be a one-on-one discussion. Please chime in with your suggestions and recommendations.

EDIT: Landshark & crsmiffy - Thanks for those responses. I missed them while composing this response. Glad to hear how high your oil pressure is, which confirms my plans to do Tim's mod's. And, I agree with Brute - I'd like to make this engine live a long, long time as I'm passing on to my offspring. So whatever I can do to lengthen its life is worth it.

 

Been thinking about all the other little oil passage smoothing. I don't think it will gain a lot of flow but by removing restrictions it will help the oil stay a little cooler. In hydraulics a restriction can heat oil up very quickly.
Honestly though don't know if the results are worth it and unless you tested it before and after we'll never know, BUT, it is something I would have done if I thought of it lol. It certainly wont hurt and cant be done on mass produced engines.
Any racers out there who have done something like this?

 

Now you've joined the party!

Ok, so what might one do to smooth the flow of that elixir of engine life? Let's start the trip where the oil enters the oil filter, and this shot shows that point, at the bottom, which is the passage from the oil pump.




How 'bout we radius that sharp corner to smooth the flow of oil that is wanting to wrap around the whole outside perimeter of the filter. Here's what that looks like with just a bit of work.




It come outs of the filter and back into the block via the INSERT (OIL FILTER MOUNTING BOLT) (# D7AZ-6890-B, replaced by F1AZ-6890-B, and shared with 300, 302, W, M, & 400's), and the discharge of the adaptor looks like this before:




But, the oil has to make a hard turn coming out of that thing into the block. And, the ID of it is .500", which is less than that of the .585" passage into which it is going. So, in this shot it has been opened up to .547" (35/64"), which is a 20% improvement in cross-sectional area, and the outlet has been radiused to ease the turn into the block.




When it comes out of the oil filter adaptor it has to go into the block again, so what does that entrance look like?




Let's radius that to smooth the transition and minimize turbulence, which reduces flow. (I remember my ME fraternity brothers saying "that's laminar flow", which is good!)




Or, let's look at the view the filter gets:




Now that we have the oil up in the engine, how do we get it back to the pan for another round-trip? Here's the valley before treatment:




How 'bout we radius the edges on the return holes? That should make it flow better.




And, didn't someone say something about the return into the distributor area? What does that look like? Yikes!




Let's work that over just a bit:




And that took about 3 hours. I don't know if it will make much difference, but it didn't cost anything and makes me feel much better. And, I do know that having done similar things on a Chevy 350 the oil pressure moved with the tach - blip the throttle and the change on the oil pressure gauge was instantaneous. Much, much faster than originally. So, why not do it to a Ford?

 

This is looking awesome! Definitely doing this stuff to my block. One question though, why not open up the filter adapter to .585 like the passage it's going into? Surely you wouldn't lose much strength by losing another .038 would you? If my calculations are right(probably not) you would have around a 13% cross-sectional area increase when it goes from .547 to .585. P = F / A, so if F is constant(force from the oil pump) then P = 1 / A so the pressure would drop by 13% and the oil would slow down, which we don't want right? Am I right or stupid? haha

 

Wow! I'd forgotten P=F/A, which is an analogy to I=E/R. (The class I took in parallel systems was fun! There I learned how resistors are like friction, pressure is like voltage, etc.)

Yes, making the area larger slows the flow down, but in this case that's not a bad thing as high flow creates heat. But what you really want is to have a system that doesn't slow or speed up the flow since doing so requires power to accelerate or decelerate the mass of the fluid. So, in theory it would be good to open the adaptor up to .585", but my concern there is mechanical strength, or lack thereof. The weight of the filter causes it to want to move up and down on bumps, and that is prevented through the adaptor. So opening it up more than I did worries me.

But, dropping back, the size of the outlet of the oil pump is .500", and the size of the passage in the block to the oil filter is .500". So there isn't a crying need to suddenly jump up to .585" just because that's the size of the downstream passage. Given that I'm happy to increase the area 20% while still retaining the strength.

 

I see now, I had forgotten the oil pump passage was .500. So let's open it up to .585 haha I=E/R is Amps=Volts/Resistance right? And I didn't know about the heat thing. I haven't done much with hydraulic thermodynamics.

 

I'm loathe to modify the pump, and its output is .500". So, why mod the passage from the pump to the filter if the pump is still smaller?

This discussion took me back to the drawing and I realize there are things missing on it - specifically the oil pump and the filter. In addition the junction between the filter output passage and the horizontal passage is poorly shown as it doesn't come close to showing how sharp the corner is - which I want to smooth. So it looks to me like I need to redo the drawing and fix those omissions - for two reasons:

• First, it helps understand the whole thing so anyone modifying the system will realize that, for instance, just opening up the filter adaptor doesn't do much since everything upstream is .500"
• Second, if this is going to be something that others can use it needs to have everything I've done captured and depicted.

Let me know if that makes sense, please.

 

I know, I was kidding about opening up the passage. Yeah it makes sense. I can kinda tell how sharp it turns because I've seen it on my motor but for people who don't have a block handy it may be confusing.

 

I'm thinking of using a Flex Hone to smooth that corner as well as to smooth up all the bores. Looks like this:

 

So you're using that in all the oil passages or just the ones you modded? And how would you put an extension on it to get it all the way through the lifter galleries(if you are)?

 

As far as oil passages go I see no reason not to open up and chamfer everything you dare and want to bother with. Heat is a small concern, the heat is minor and comes from friction and pressure increases. Friction is low cause well it's oil, and pressure increases in the pump not the passages. However pressure drops caused by restrictions are accumulative just like resistors in a electronic circuit. So even if the oil pump passage is still .500, increasing the oil filter adapter to .585 still helps. And of course to a point hot oil is a very good thing, operating temps of oil should be over 212 deg. This removes water from the oil which causes corrosion and worst of all acids in the oil.

I got another crazy idea for the lifter valley drain back. As I see it the issue isn't so much oil drain back down but gasses up. There will always be some blow by and those gasses need to escape the crankcase. In this engine they must escape up via those rather smal holes in the lifter valley. If gasses are flowing up through these holes it's harder for oil to flow down. So I propose another crazy idea to pull the gasses out of the crankcase so that the air flows both from head to lifter valley and lifter valley to crankcase flowing down sucking the oil down at the same time.

Tap that hole in the front of the valley pan that vents towards the distributor and attach a tube there. Pass this tube out the(or into) intake manifold via a fitting and use it for your PCV. Then most likely vent both the valve covers to the air filter. This way air flows from the head with the oil to the valley, and then down again with the oil to the crankcase. Then combines with blow by gasses and out through that new vent to the and intake for the PCV.